


The Breakdown

by winterda



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Drabbles, Drama, Fluff and Angst, Tags May Change, batfamily, prompt fics
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-29
Updated: 2015-07-31
Packaged: 2018-04-11 20:23:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4450928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/winterda/pseuds/winterda
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A series of drabbles and shorts about Jason Todd and his family.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. One: Early Childhood Memory

**Author's Note:**

> AN: I've been wanting to try and write some Batfamily (specifically Jason) for awhile. I can't say how well this will turn out but, if they suck, at least they're short. All the prompts are essay writing prompts that are only supposed to be done in five to ten minutes. I'm aiming for that, unless the mood just strikes me to continue, kind of like it did on the first one. If the characters are seriously OOC, I do apologies. Also, I don't have a beta, so please excuse the grammatically and spelling mistakes. I tried to catch them.

Jason hid under the table when the yelling began. He's small enough to fit easily and smart enough to know to get out of sight when his parents raised their voice loud enough to drown out the TV. He didn't understand why they were yelling, and the words were too big for him to know then. What he did know was that Mommy was hurt and Daddy was angry. Very angry. It's the first time he heard the word “kill” and understood that that was a bad thing. His dad promised that he's going to kill a guy named Mark and stormed out the door.

Jason's mom was crying. He thought she's sad, but she looked angry instead. Jason tried to push himself further under the table, but he managed to hit one of the chair legs. It squeaked loudly in the too silent room, while Jason cringed. She noticed him then in his hiding place. Jason knew better than to run and waited for her to move the chair out of the way so she can easily get to him. He's surprised that she wasn't yelling at him or pulling him out by the arm. Instead, she lifted him up, balanced him on her sharp hip, and took him back back to the little corner of one room apartment that's all his own. She's still crying. He thought the tears looked odd against the purple mark on her cheek.

“Your father is an idiot,” she muttered against Jason's head.

“Why?” he asked. He was too young to understand the answer, but he asked anyway because he's little and that's what little kids do.

His mom laid him on his small, thin mattress with its musty smelling sheets, and then she knelt onto the ground next to it. She sniffled and wiped at her nose with the back of her hand. 

“Because he's going to get himself hurt because of Mommy,” she said.

Jason frowned. It's too grown up for him, but he wanted to know so badly. So he asked again, “Why?”

She smiled and brushed a few dark locks from his forehead.

“Because, baby, if someone hurts someone you love, it's what you do.”

Jason stared up at her, but didn't ask again. Instead, he watched as his mother left him in his little corner on his tiny bed. He watched as she sat on the couch and muttered prayers and curses, and they waited as forever ticked by. He watched when the door finally opened, and his dad limps in with a bloody, satisfied grin. His mom hit him and called him an idiot again before hugging him. Jason was so tired by then that he started to drift off at the sight, but not before he heard his father swear that no one would touch his family like that and not pay for it in blood. 

Jason fell asleep with the lesson fresh in his ears.


	2. Two: Favorite Color

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> His favorite color was green.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Um, yeah, not sure about this one. Hope someone likes.

When Jason was a kid, his mother kept a plant in their little apartment. It a simple vine plant and not particularly interesting to look at because it didn't bloom or anything like that, but it was the brightest and healthiest thing in the house. He could remember how it looked, lit by the midday sun against the concrete buildings and dull gray skies: all bright and warm and vibrant. It was by far his favorite thing to look at, and at the age of four, he decided that green should be his favorite color. 

It was a good color to choose. Throughout most of his childhood and early adolescent the color green always came with good things: the trees that surrounded the Manor, the apple slices that Alfred would give him as an after school snack, the wrapping paper for his first real Christmas present in years. Even his uniform had green in it (though he rather wished that it wasn't attached to the tiny shorts). 

He still remembered the first time someone challenged his belief that green could be anything but good. His ninth grade English teacher had starting in about how green was used in literature as the color of death. That was why Gwain fought a green knight instead of black. That was why Disney villains were often surrounded by green smoke at some point another. Jason remembered rolling his eyes and tuning out the lecture on symbolism because obviously this woman was out of her mind.

It wasn't too long after that he died. Suddenly, the color that he had loved so much growing up had changed into something sinister: a laughing crowbar and boiling, burning water. Like everything else in his new life, something that he had once cared for had turned sour. Now, he couldn't even stand to look at the color anymore. Which, of course, was hard to do since his once dark blue eyes now had a tealish tent them. A little reminder of his time in the Pit.

The universe really does love him. Doesn't it?

No, he couldn't stand green any longer. 

Now? Now he found himself partial to red.


	3. Three: What Makes You Laugh

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some nights were better than others.

The warehouse was mostly quiet now. A few of the goons groaned at his feet and there was one in the corner who was crying because of little bullet hole he'd put in his shoulder. Really, whoever hired these morons really needed to look into a higher class of henchmen. They folded faster than Riddler, and all you had to do was look funny at him most times. 

Holstering his gun, Jason walked over to the crying man. He didn't miss the way that the guy cringed back nor the look of pure fear in his eyes. The punch was swift and effective, and the guy crumpled to the ground without another whimper. The vicious part of Jason enjoyed seeing the guy like this, and it whispered all sort of cruel things that he could do to the goon before silencing him forever. Jason, however, ignored it. Not out the goodness of his heart (he was fairly sure that he didn't have one of those anymore), but because he was trying. Honestly, he wasn't sure why, but it seemed easier not to do it than deal with the consequences if he did. So while there had been bloodshed that night, these idiots would live to bleed again.

Besides, what they did was kind of funny.

The whole thing was a set up to lure Batman or one of them into some kind of trap. Whether it was some start up, wannabe villain or a gang trying to make a name for themselves, he didn't know nor care. It was just their bad luck that Red Hood happened to be the closest one when the call went out that Red Robin had been taken, and where his last known location was. Finding them really hadn't been all that hard from there. 

Jason was pretty sure that of the Batclan, he wasn't the one that they wanted showing up. Funny how being a known killer puts villains off like that. So Jason showed up, fought the bad guys, and now got to enjoy the sight of Tim Drake hanging upside down in the center of a warehouse like one of those sharks someone caught at the pier. 

Oh, this was a good night. 

Tim's face was nearly purple from the amount of blood that had rushed to it, but he still managed to glare up at Jason.

“Are you going to help me down or what?” he asked flatly.

That would be the right thing to do. After all, the kid was missing his belt, shoes, and gloves (apparently at least one of the idiots wasn't a complete moron), so Tim was at a bit of a disadvantage at being able to pick the multitude of locks the guys had used. 

But Jason wasn't always known to do the right thing.

“Don't know,” Jason replied as he walked to where Tim was hanging. “I kind of like you this way.”

“Funny,” Tim said dryly. “Now, I've got about another minute before all this blood rushing to my head is going to make me pass out, so get me down.”

Jason rolled his eyes. The kid could be such a drama queen sometimes.

“Fine,” he said. 

However, instead of moving to actually help Tim down, Jason reached into his pocket. Tim narrowed his eyes as if he could actually see Jason smiling from behind the mask. 

“First things first, though.”

Slipping his phone out of his pocket, Jason quickly knelt down next to Tim and took a selfie of the two of them. Tim was hissing at him as he did it, which just made the picture all the better in Jason's opinion. His fingers were already flying for a multitude of commands of what to do with the picture by the time Tim finally stop swinging around like he was trying to get at him.

“Don't you dare,” Tim growled, but it was too late by then. The picture was already gone.

“Relax,” Jason said as he put the phone away. “I didn't send it to any of your little friends.”

He was just about to start on the first lock when he grinned down at Tim and said, “But, fair warning, I think the demon brat just found his Christmas card for this year.”

“I'm going to kill you.”

Jason just laughed. “Yeah, well, you wouldn't be the first.”


End file.
